Tablet-only publication The Daily closing up shop on December 15

Apple and News Corp. launched The Daily with great fanfare in early 2011.

News Corp.'s iPad-only publication, The Daily, will be shuttered on December 15, 2012, almost two years after its public launch. News Corp. made the announcement on Monday morning as part of its organizational changes, referring to The Daily as a "bold experiment" that simply could not sustain itself. As such, the remaining staff will be merged into another News Corp. publication, the New York Post, and "the brand will live on in other channels."

The announcement may not seem particularly notable now, but when The Daily was first launched in early 2011, it was hailed as the beginning of a new age in digital publishing. Apple and News. Corp unveiled it together in New York City, where The Daily was called "the first 'all media' product" for tablet-using readers. The launch was unique because of Apple's direct involvement in the announcement—although Apple wasn't involved in the publication of the "newspaper" or its content, it was clear the company wanted to see The Daily succeed as an example of iPad-only (and later, tablet-only) publishing.

"There's no paper, no multimillion dollar presses, no trucks, and we're passing on these savings to the reader," News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch trumpeted to the press. "The target audience is the 50 million Americans expected to own tablets in the next year."

But readers just didn't seem as interested in The Daily as Murdoch and Apple hoped. There was constant news of trouble within the publication, and it ended up laying off a good chunk of its staff earlier this year. Now, according to News Corp., the whole publication is closing up in just a couple weeks.

"From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term," Murdoch said in a statement issued Monday. "Therefore we will take the very best of what we have learned at The Daily and apply it to all our properties."

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

1) since launch, I've seen virtual NO advertizing for the Daily at all. Granted, Fox news is blocked in my Dish systems (customized channel guide, it, foriegn language channels, shopping networks, religous networks, soap network, etc are de-listed on my TV so maybe I'm just not seeing their ads? Still, news networks continually cross-advertize each other, so I'd think I should have seen something). Mindshare is everything!

2) I have several news readers on my phone, but #1 most used by far is Pulse. Why? Aggregation. Reading a single publication seems like a chore, and having multiple apps to handle who's news i want to read is less than ideal. The Daily is not one of the options in either of my 2 most used readers... For a company that makes money off people viewing their content, they chose a very narrow method for getting that content to people.

3) tablets did not get anywhere near as popular as NewsCorp hoped. 50m would have been fine, if they were all in the USA, but they were not. Granted, the app was nice, but after a few months, it became a common experience on iOS. The Daily was built heavily on core apple technology and APIs, so cloning its experience was relatively easy.

Without an audience you have no business. Something that's a great new idea but is not exclusively yours, especially within media where borrowing of ideas is protected by freedoms of the press, and your grand idea is just a means of presentation others will certainly copy? The Daily is going away because Murdoch didn;t manage it and advertize it properly, not because the idea itself failed.

"But readers just didn't seem as interested in The Daily as Murdoch and Apple hoped."

Maybe readers weren't that interested in Rupert Murdoch? How much does the Fox News fanbase overlap with the Apple fanbase? Because that's the addressable market for The Daily.

Noted similar in my post, but not exactly stated that point blank. I block Fox News on my TV, something that irks the hell out of my father when he comes to visit. I prefer my news from sources not on the payroll of political parties nor owned by large biased investors of one or the other.

The idea that Fox News has been fined by the FCC more times for airing lies and/or being forced to print retractions in the last 15 years than all other cable news networks combined says a lot about them. The fact they also list their "news" logo under many shows they call "independent entertainment" and or "satiracle programming" and defend those shows innacurate responses and information as "those shows are for entertainment only and should not be considered trusted news sources" yet they continue to air them.

I likes the Daily as an app, but I could not accept the source of the content.

"But readers just didn't seem as interested in The Daily as Murdoch and Apple hoped."

Maybe readers weren't that interested in Rupert Murdoch? How much does the Fox News fanbase overlap with the Apple fanbase? Because that's the addressable market for The Daily.

You think only apple fans buy apple products now?

It's probably a lot more than just smarmy hipsters making apple the most profitable corporation on the planet.

He's suggesting Fox News fans are low in the apple fan category. Demographically, that is correct. You don;t have to be an apple fan to have an appel product, but you do generall need to be a fan of murdoch's enterprise to considder the Daily a viable news source.

"But readers just didn't seem as interested in The Daily as Murdoch and Apple hoped."

Maybe readers weren't that interested in Rupert Murdoch? How much does the Fox News fanbase overlap with the Apple fanbase? Because that's the addressable market for The Daily.

Do you know how much Rush Limbaugh pushes Apple? Is he a paid spokesman for them? I hear him flipping through the radio at lunch and will listen if he is talking about Apple. It's hilarious. He does at least one full segment on how great all Apple products are.

I'm not entirely surprised. There's been no promotion of the app to speak of. I suspected something was wrong when they removed the Landscape view (which I preferred, BTW) The content has become more magazine than newspaper as well. ...and the new "Local beta" is nothing more than a dump of AP articles.

"But readers just didn't seem as interested in The Daily as Murdoch and Apple hoped."

Maybe readers weren't that interested in Rupert Murdoch? How much does the Fox News fanbase overlap with the Apple fanbase? Because that's the addressable market for The Daily.

You think only apple fans buy apple products now?

It's probably a lot more than just smarmy hipsters making apple the most profitable corporation on the planet.

He's suggesting Fox News fans are low in the apple fan category. Demographically, that is correct. You don;t have to be an apple fan to have an appel product, but you do generall need to be a fan of murdoch's enterprise to considder the Daily a viable news source.

I'd like to see some statistics backing that up because from my experiences there's quite a few gun-totin', bible-thumpin' soccer moms here in Dallas that swear by Apple products. In fact I'd say from my experiences political party ties don't really play much into their smart phone choices at all. A bit of peer pressure and "sameness" (fitting in) plus the ecosystem are what seem to drive it. Everyone around here has an iPhone and everyone just assumes everyone else has an iPhone. My mom who's probably about as harcore a conservative as they get swears by Apple products (iPhone 4S, Mac Mini, and 27" iMac). She doesn't understand why I like Windows Phone and repeatedly tells me to "just get an iPhone already".

I was greatly interested in The Daily. It was spectacular from technological and design standpoints. It was truly years ahead of all other media outlets.

Unfortunately it was also not "news". Instead, it was clearly commentary, with nearly every story tainted by a political agenda. Topic selection, wording and even photo selection all were incredibly biased. It was the tablet equivalent of Fox News.

Ultimately this was the Daily's downfall. There weren't enough iPad using politically conservative extremists to support their business model.

I dont think the demise of the Daily had much / anything to do with its political bent. It didnt make it because the experience - content - usability - wow factor was simply not enough to convince a large enough number of potential users to want to pay for it. I signed up early on, and after futzing around with errors, frequent app updates that didnt do much, and lack of interest in the specific content, simply gave up on it.

I applaud the grand experiment - but like many experiments, it simply did not work well enough to reach critical mass.

"But readers just didn't seem as interested in The Daily as Murdoch and Apple hoped."

Maybe readers weren't that interested in Rupert Murdoch? How much does the Fox News fanbase overlap with the Apple fanbase? Because that's the addressable market for The Daily.

Noted similar in my post, but not exactly stated that point blank. I block Fox News on my TV, something that irks the hell out of my father when he comes to visit. I prefer my news from sources not on the payroll of political parties nor owned by large biased investors of one or the other.

The idea that Fox News has been fined by the FCC more times for airing lies and/or being forced to print retractions in the last 15 years than all other cable news networks combined says a lot about them. The fact they also list their "news" logo under many shows they call "independent entertainment" and or "satiracle programming" and defend those shows innacurate responses and information as "those shows are for entertainment only and should not be considered trusted news sources" yet they continue to air them.

I likes the Daily as an app, but I could not accept the source of the content.

It's a pity that people such as yourself think the best way to deal with different opinions is to completely censor them out. If you occassionally watched other channels, you might drop some of that hatred and see that occassionally they have valid points about some issues.

Your claims about the FCC are wrong. The FCC has fined Fox for using obscene language. It doesn't decide facts.

I guess you might want to stick with a network like MSNBC that has been caught many times in the last couple of years deliberately misrepresenting people they don't agree with by selectively editing videos.

Maybe there just wasn't an audience for DRM encrypted, only availalble on one platform, restricted distribution magazine, when for free I can use a reader like reeder or pulse to get my daily news, and can share links, post feedback, or read on other platforms? The daily just seemed like they were trying to push the old media format without understanding what makes the Internet great.

The app was wonderful, but there was no meaningful content. You could read the paper in 15-20 minutes.

That is the challenge for mass media publications - how much content to put out? A large segment of the readership only wants 15-20 mins worth of content, while another large segment wants much more.

Looking at the newspaper circulation for the national papers confirms this. USA Today, WSJ and the NYT pretty much own the top 3 spots in the ABC Circulation reports. While the WSJ and NYT are large comprehensive papers that would take an hour+ to read completely most days, the USA Today is designed to be consumed in a much shorter sitting.

As a newspaperman and new-media refugee-in-exile, I think to be successful a mass publication has to allow customization by the reader to choose the news they want along with a selection of important stories. The technology to do this in print - personalized editions - was being tested and prototyped but the collapse of newspaper advertising revenues and 3 centuries of entrenched ways of doing things led to a stillbirth.

While I love Pulse, the Associated Press's smartphone app that allows customization for personalized wire content is the best implementation I have seen from a "publication." But it isn't The Daily with a focus on news and high quality presentation.

I dont think the demise of the Daily had much / anything to do with its political bent. It didnt make it because the experience - content - usability - wow factor was simply not enough to convince a large enough number of potential users to want to pay for it. I signed up early on, and after futzing around with errors, frequent app updates that didnt do much, and lack of interest in the specific content, simply gave up on it.

I applaud the grand experiment - but like many experiments, it simply did not work well enough to reach critical mass.

Yeah, I liked the app, but the bias was apparent even though I didn't know the background. For a while, almost every issue included an anti-Obama/anti-democrats editorial. Sometimes they were totally justified, but more often they seemed strained.

The Daily was just another conservative propaganda machine. If they had an unbiased mission to real news I would have kept reading, but it was just the iPad version of fox news. I actually loved the idea and subscribed for a few months until I couldn't ignore the propagandist tainting of the facts. Good to see it go. I just hope that this doesn't stop a group with a true journalistic mission from seeing past this failure to try again.

"But readers just didn't seem as interested in The Daily as Murdoch and Apple hoped."

Maybe readers weren't that interested in Rupert Murdoch? How much does the Fox News fanbase overlap with the Apple fanbase? Because that's the addressable market for The Daily.

You think only apple fans buy apple products now?

It's probably a lot more than just smarmy hipsters making apple the most profitable corporation on the planet.

He's suggesting Fox News fans are low in the apple fan category. Demographically, that is correct. You don;t have to be an apple fan to have an appel product, but you do generall need to be a fan of murdoch's enterprise to considder the Daily a viable news source.

I'd like to see some statistics backing that up because from my experiences there's quite a few gun-totin', bible-thumpin' soccer moms here in Dallas that swear by Apple products. In fact I'd say from my experiences political party ties don't really play much into their smart phone choices at all. A bit of peer pressure and "sameness" (fitting in) plus the ecosystem are what seem to drive it. Everyone around here has an iPhone and everyone just assumes everyone else has an iPhone. My mom who's probably about as harcore a conservative as they get swears by Apple products (iPhone 4S, Mac Mini, and 27" iMac). She doesn't understand why I like Windows Phone and repeatedly tells me to "just get an iPhone already".

I don't agree with your assumption at all.

Completely agreed.

I know plenty of apple users and every one of them is the typical ignorant and easily indoctrinated sort. (heavy churchgoing gun toting)

It's been my experience that there is one kind of apple user - ignorant consumer types. From what I can tell right wingers are much more likely to be in that category than liberals.

It's a pity that people such as yourself think the best way to deal with different opinions is to completely censor them out. If you occassionally watched other channels, you might drop some of that hatred and see that occassionally they have valid points about some issues.

Oh, please...

If you want to hear opposing viewpoints, you listen to public radio*. If you want to listen to partisan hacks trying to pass off far-right rhetoric as "balanced", "mainstream" "news", you watch Fox.

I know plenty of apple users and every one of them is the typical ignorant and easily indoctrinated sort. (heavy churchgoing gun toting)

It's been my experience that there is one kind of apple user - ignorant consumer types. From what I can tell right wingers are much more likely to be in that category than liberals.

Not sure I really care for the assumption on your part that my mom is an ignorant consumer type. You could have agreed with me without resorting to typical fan troll Apple bashing.

Does she spend a lot of time reflecting on what her purchases mean and how they impact the world around her, or does she just want and buy?

If it's not the former then she's an ignorant consumer type. Don't take it personally, most people don't think about slaughter house conditions or Asian slave labor and its impact on American manufacturing, labor, and the economy.

I just hope that this doesn't stop a group with a true journalistic mission from seeing past this failure to try again.

Is there really such a creature? Everyone's always going on about bias this and bias that, so I don't think that anyone trying this experiment again*, will be much different.

*Why would they? What's in it for them?

While I agree that there is no way to hit zero when it comes down to bias, we're human it's just not possible; there are those in the world of journalism who strive for it. It is something they think about and want to do their best to achieve. Propaganda publications have absolutely no true/honest intention to see things through the most fact based, un-opinionated lens possible.

Basically, it isn't possible in the truest sense, but it is something that can be reached for. If I had ANY confidence that a group like Fox News had any TRUE conviction about unbiased reporting, I think I could listen to them and try to consider their perspective, because I wouldn't have the sense that they are lying to me to accomplish a hidden goal.

"But readers just didn't seem as interested in The Daily as Murdoch and Apple hoped."

Maybe readers weren't that interested in Rupert Murdoch? How much does the Fox News fanbase overlap with the Apple fanbase? Because that's the addressable market for The Daily.

Couldn't disagree more.

In my experience, there were two types of early adopters for the iPad: (1) general tech early adopters and (ii) senior executives who saw the iPad as a laptop replacement (if all you used a laptop for was email and maybe watch a movie on the plane, then iPad is a great way to lighten the carry-on). Of the people I know in category (ii), about 90% of them believe everything that is said on Fox News.

Furthermore, News Corp is much bigger than Fox News. Plenty of people in NYC read the Post, for example.

I think the main reason for failure of The Daily is that there are plenty of news sources out there that people are already familiar with. I never even thought for a second about even checking it out. Between CNN, NYTimes and Wall Street Journal, I figure I've already got it covered. What is The Daily bringing to the table?

It's a pity that people such as yourself think the best way to deal with different opinions is to completely censor them out. If you occassionally watched other channels, you might drop some of that hatred and see that occassionally they have valid points about some issues.

Oh, please...

If you want to hear opposing viewpoints, you listen to public radio*. If you want to listen to partisan hacks trying to pass off far-right rhetoric as "balanced", "mainstream" "news", you watch Fox.

* Except Alan Chartock, who is an obnoxious windbag.

As someone who does listen to NPR (and BBC World News) everyday for at least 3 hours during my commute/work, I can say that there is a liberal bend to some of their reporting/coverage. Which is fine since that is their main demographic, but don't try to act like somehow the media you like isn't biased and the media you don't like is. That is exactly what people who watch Fox News think as well.

"But readers just didn't seem as interested in The Daily as Murdoch and Apple hoped."

Maybe readers weren't that interested in Rupert Murdoch? How much does the Fox News fanbase overlap with the Apple fanbase? Because that's the addressable market for The Daily.

Couldn't disagree more.

In my experience, there were two types of early adopters for the iPad: (1) general tech early adopters and (ii) senior executives who saw the iPad as a laptop replacement (if all you used a laptop for was email and maybe watch a movie on the plane, then iPad is a great way to lighten the carry-on). Of the people I know in category (ii), about 90% of them believe everything that is said on Fox News.

Furthermore, News Corp is much bigger than Fox News. Plenty of people in NYC read the Post, for example.

I think the main reason for failure of The Daily is that there are plenty of news sources out there that people are already familiar with. I never even thought for a second about even checking it out. Between CNN, NYTimes and Wall Street Journal, I figure I've already got it covered. What is The Daily bringing to the table?

Regarding "...people I know in category (ii), about 90% of them believe everything that is said on Fox News". Everything really! Your use of the word "everything" makes that fact very doubtful, even though it is qualified by "about 90%". It is doubtful that anyone, even your "about 90%" will believe "everything" they hear on a particular netrork or for that matter can even necessarily remember everything they hear!

It's a pity that people such as yourself think the best way to deal with different opinions is to completely censor them out. If you occassionally watched other channels, you might drop some of that hatred and see that occassionally they have valid points about some issues.

Oh, please...

If you want to hear opposing viewpoints, you listen to public radio*. If you want to listen to partisan hacks trying to pass off far-right rhetoric as "balanced", "mainstream" "news", you watch Fox.

* Except Alan Chartock, who is an obnoxious windbag.

As someone who does listen to NPR (and BBC World News) everyday for at least 3 hours during my commute/work, I can say that there is a liberal bend to some of their reporting/coverage. Which is fine since that is their main demographic, but don't try to act like somehow the media you like isn't biased and the media you don't like is. That is exactly what people who watch Fox News think as well.

One of the real problems is that generally a person does not have the time to verify the facts for themselves, if they can be verified. It is incumbent upon all of us to explore further to discern the facts from fiction. The good news is that in many cases the data is available, although the time may not be. Trust, but verify needs to be our modus operandi...

While The Daily did have a right slant, a lot of people here are greatly exaggerating it by comparing it to Fox News. The Daily wasn't ran by Roger Ailes. There wasn't enough actual news content or depth to consider a bias.

If you printed out all the news text from a typical issue, you'd maybe have a 1½ page document (there is a lot of filler material)

It's a pity that people such as yourself think the best way to deal with different opinions is to completely censor them out. If you occassionally watched other channels, you might drop some of that hatred and see that occassionally they have valid points about some issues.

Oh, please...

If you want to hear opposing viewpoints, you listen to public radio*. If you want to listen to partisan hacks trying to pass off far-right rhetoric as "balanced", "mainstream" "news", you watch Fox.

* Except Alan Chartock, who is an obnoxious windbag.

As someone who does listen to NPR (and BBC World News) everyday for at least 3 hours during my commute/work, I can say that there is a liberal bend to some of their reporting/coverage. Which is fine since that is their main demographic, but don't try to act like somehow the media you like isn't biased and the media you don't like is. That is exactly what people who watch Fox News think as well.

And there is a conservative bend to some of their coverage, too. I'm not arguing that everything you hear always lands exactly in the center, but at least the line crosses left and right over the center without ever veering too far one way or the other.

And when you have representatives of opposing viewpoints on a program, both sides actually have a chance to state their position. The conversation may be charged, but it almost always stays civil.

Engadget may have summed it up best: "it's hard to compete with free". Whether you're looking for conservative or liberal news, there're free sources all over. Including radio and podcasts. Pay a subscription for something that can be found elsewhere free, and on more devices and in more formats? Maybe and maybe not. I'm sure some did, but not the numbers he was counting on.

Plus iPad only to start may have been a bad idea. They should have expanded devices a lot sooner. Not everyone who wanted to read the Daily may have bought an iPad. Despite what it looks like on a lot of sites, I'm betting every other person does NOT have an iPad. Many people I know are reading news on their smartphones. These new ones with 4.5 and up screens have some people I know surfing whenever they have free time.

I'm not entirely surprised. There's been no promotion of the app to speak of. I suspected something was wrong when they removed the Landscape view (which I preferred, BTW) The content has become more magazine than newspaper as well. ...and the new "Local beta" is nothing more than a dump of AP articles.

Overpromise and underdeliver.

That doesn't sound worth paying for. I wonder if they also lost subscribers due to that.

Color me surprised that a multimedia news magazine/app didn't last a long time. People have been attempting these things for the last 15 years, since the days of the multimedia computer, aka a computer with a CD-ROM drive and a sound card. Delivery is certainly easier than in the past, but competition in that same ease of access has grown considerably as well. They apparently added one Android tablet, the Kindle Fire, and the iPhone to their repertoire; meanwhile, all the portable computers can access the web.

I remember at the time asking myself - what content did this have that wasn't available everywhere else, and why would people pay for it when they can get AP wire articles for free. I'm glad I'm not just some old-fashioned guy who doesn't get it. This expensive RSS feed reader really wasn't compelling.

Personally I can say that whartever that ghoul Rupert Murdoch is selling I am very definitely NOT interested in buying and never will be. He and companies that he owns represent everything that I stand against.